


On Love and Other Matters

by AutisticMob



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: 5+1 Things, Ableism, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Aromantic, Aromantic Alphonse Elric, Aromantic Author, Autism, Autism Spectrum, Autistic Alphonse Elric, Background Het, Background Poly, Canon Compliant, Canon Continuation, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Bonding, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, No Incest, Platonic Relationships, Post-Canon, Queerplatonic Relationships, Self-Discovery, Trans, Trans Alphonse Elric, Trans Character, Trans Edward Elric, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Winry Rockbell, Transphobia, background Edwin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22216975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutisticMob/pseuds/AutisticMob
Summary: Alphonse Elric loves alchemy. He loves with the world and cats and the feeling of rain on his skin and the body he regained after so many years. He's in love with hearty dinners around joyous tables, with the feeling of belonging, with sleeping in late and traveling to foreign lands. He loves his brother and Winry and all his friendsFive times Alphonse was an outsider to love, and the one time he wasn't.
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric, Alphonse Elric & Winry Rockbell
Comments: 4
Kudos: 80





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for not posting for a while. I had a dry spell in terms of motivation and was finishing school, and then the holidays came around, etc. you know the drill.
> 
> Also, as another note, Ed and Al are both trans in this. I use their actual names and correct pronouns, but other characters don't (before they come out). Ed's deadname is Moira and Al's is Estelle.

He’s three years old when it happens. He’s lying in the scratchy late summer grass carpeting the hills of Resembool like a green ocean, his big brother lying beside him. He doesn’t know he’s a boy yet, and his dress leaves the backs of his legs exposed to the grass beneath. It pokes at his skin and sends a strange buzzing feeling through his body in waves. Still, he remains silent, eyes fixated on the sluggish clouds inching past above. 

“Hey, Estelle…” Ed turns to glance at his younger brother, bits of grass and leaves intertwined with his long golden hair. Al knows their mother’s going to scold him when they return home, but she’ll spend thankless hours combing all the bits of plant matter from her oldest son’s hair. 

“Hm?”

Ed’s glance returns to the vast blue expanse above them. “Do you think love exists?”

“Love…?”

Ed laughs, loud and hearty and raucous. It tumbles over the hillside and makes the inside of his ears feel funny. Ed talks loud, Al thinks. He always has. It’s as if his very existence commands the attention of others.

“I don’t know...maybe…?”

Ed shakes his head, combing a dirt-stained hand through his hair. “I don’t know either,” he sighs. 

Al knows he wants to say something, but the words don’t come, instead remaining locked in his throat like they do all too often. 

Still, Ed continues without fail, and the uneasiness rising in Al’s stomach like a creeping poison ebbs away into nothing.

“I mean, if love’s real...why did our old man leave us? Doesn’t loving someone mean staying with them no matter what?” Ed questions, his small hand clenching into a white-knuckled fist. He turns to look at Al, his golden eyes shimmering with sadness. 

He sighs, propping himself up on his elbows and shaking some stray blades of grass from his shoulder-length hair. A mischievous breeze tousles both of their hair, combing its fingers through the waves of uncut grass. A faint trace of autumn clings to it, sending a chill through Al’s body. 

“Are you cold?”

Al nods. His throat feels too scratchy to speak, and Ed reaches for his hand before pulling back. 

“Sorry. I forgot. No touching, right?”

He nods again. That’s all he can do right now. 

Something in Ed’s voice trembles, and a dull pain throbs in Al’s chest. “We should go inside before the sun sets,” Ed suggests, rising to his feet and dusting off his shorts. 

Al knows it isn’t a suggestion, and as he sits up the ground beneath him warps and twists with all the rage of an ocean in a storm. Blackness claws at the edges of his blurred vision and bile burns the back of his throat. 

“Moira…” Al breathes, his own sharp, warm breaths betraying him as they burn his lungs and squeeze his chest. 

Ed chews his bottom lip and shrugs off his thin jacket, draping it over Al’s trembling body. He looks so small and frail that Ed wonders if his tiny heart might give out. 

“Let’s get you inside. You can lean against me if you need to.” Ed grabs his brother’s shoulder and holds him close, keeping his grip tight. 

“How’s the pressure?” 

“G-good.”

Al’s breathing is labored, and his chest strains with every agonizing, rattling breath that feels as though he’s breathing fire. Behind his ribcage, his heart pounds like a trapped bird, feet moving mindlessly beneath him as his mind races in a thousand directions. 

As the front door of their rural home creeps into view, Ed calls for their mother. The wind carries his voice somewhere far away, and a high-pitched ring rattles Al’s eardrums. 

His brain reduces the next half-hour or so to a scrambled, blurry, painful memory. His mother seats him at the table, flitting about the kitchen as she prepares him a warm glass of what he can only assume is milk, and a warm plate of whatever they’d eaten for dinner the night prior. She holds the glass for him, muscle tension keeping tiny hands balled into tight fists. Some of the milk dribbles down his chin, and Ed stands frozen like a statue beside their mother, clutching the fabric of her shirt and staring at his younger brother. 

She smells nice, and concern dances in her green eyes. Green like the color of the grass outside, the color of the very earth that breathed life into their bodies. She brushes a lock of hair from his face, sending a trail of sparks blazing across his skin. 

“Mom? Is she gonna be okay?” Ed asks, his voice and knees shaking in tandem as if the very depths of his soul are shaking before the sight of his brother reduced to such a state. 

Their mother clicks her tongue and presses a kiss to Ed’s forehead. “Yes.” She pauses as she pulls away, eyebrows arched. “Moira! What’s all this in your hair?” 

Ed laughs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well...Estelle and I were playing in the grass outside.”

Their mother sighs, shaking her head. Still, forgiveness spills forth from her chest like a fountain, a smile gracing her lips. “Go draw some bath water, honey. You’ve got grass and dirt everywhere.”

Ed nods, flashing a wide, toothy grin as he scampers out of the dining room and disappears up the old, creaky wooden steps that lead to the second floor of the home. His footsteps cross the floor upstairs, and the bathroom door squeals open. 

Al’s mother returns her attention to him, dabbing at his milk-stained chin with a napkin. She shakes her head as she fusses over him, wiping the milk from his neck. She lowers herself to meet Al’s eyes, and he glances away, cheeks burning with shame. It hurts. 

_It hurts._

He doesn’t want to look.

And she doesn’t make him, but he hears a soft sigh exit his mother’s lips as she wipes at the spots on his dress. He wants to apologize, but the words get lodged in his throat, and nothing comes out save for a disgusting, garbled whine. 

“You’re okay, it’s okay.”

He wishes for another body. A body that can move how he wants, that can say what he wants, just how and when he wants. A body that isn’t irritated by the simplest of sensations like scratchy grass or fluffy coat linings. A body with a mouth that can enjoy all the tastes the world has to offer, with eyes that don’t burn and squint in bright light. A body that can keep pace with Ed’s.

But more than any of that, he wants a body that doesn’t feel like a prison. A body that isn’t a cage, with bones that don’t ache and lungs that don’t burn. 

What bitter irony.


	2. II

Three weeks before his fourth birthday, his mother makes pancakes for breakfast. She lets Al pour the syrup himself, since he always fusses over her pouring too much and ruining the delicate and fluffy texture, one of the few foods he can eat without feeling sick. 

After clearing the table, his mother breaks the news. She kneels before him and tells him they’re going to see a special doctor that might be able to help Al with his ‘problem’.

He’s not quite sure what she’s talking about, but thinks nothing of it. 

She lets him wear a comfortable T-shirt and soft pants, only having to coax him into his stuffy winter jacket as they stand by the doorway. Ed is enveloped to the point of near-disappearance in his thick, fluffy coat, a scarf wrapped around his neck and concealing about half his face. He grumbles something about being sweaty as their mother zips up Al’s coat, leaning in and pleading with him to behave _just this once_.

His muscles go slack and he lets her put his coat on, and deals with the icky feeling as the three of them leave the house and make their way down the uneven gravel path leading away from their house. 

It’s warm inside the clinic, a welcome change from outside. Ed sits on his mother’s knee as Al sits on the floor and sorts the wooden blocks into lines again and again and again, fending off the anxiety that threatens to consume him like a rising tide. Perhaps it isn’t everyone’s idea of fun, but he’s enjoying himself. He becomes so absorbed in his ritual that he doesn’t realize how much time has passed until his mother gives him a gentle tap on the shoulder, motioning for him to follow her. He stays close, clutching at the hem of her skirt and practically glued to her leg like a nervous baby duckling. 

The doctor is an older man with a kind-looking face and shaggy salt and pepper hair. He introduces himself as Gottfried Solin, pediatric psycho-neurologist. He kneels down and extends his large, calloused, wrinkly hand, flecked with brown liver spots. Al doesn’t shake his hand, and he laughs.

Dr. Solin lets Al wander around his office whilst he and Trisha converse, speaking in low tones and hushed, worried whispers, as if he’s got an incurable, terminal illness. 

His mother holds him as Dr. Solin makes Al do silly things like following his finger with his eyes or repeating words in a certain sequence. He fusses when the man touches him, withdrawing at the foreign touch burning his skin. The sensation isn’t unlike a swarm of bugs crawling on his arms and legs, and he clings to Trisha’s shirt as the doctor withdraws his hands, making note of Al’s obvious displeasure. 

His mother places him back on the ground and lets him wander around the room again. He listens to his mother and the doctor talk using words he doesn’t understand, and at one point he hears his mother gasp before clapping a hand over her mouth. 

Al turns to look at his mother as Dr. Solin places his hand on her shoulder, quiet sobs wracking her body. Tears roll down his mother’s pretty, pale face, and he wonders if it’s because of something he’s done. 

“Mama?” Al wanders back to his mother’s side, pulling at her skirt. 

Her distant, glazed-over green eyes shift to look at...no, through him. Pity swirls in the mossy green depths, and she squeezes her eyes shut as Al’s smile drops. 

Should he apologize? Guilt sits heavy in his stomach, and he opens his mouth to speak but the words dry up and disappear as if absorbed by the cold gray walls of the clinic. 

Dr. Solin does his best to console Trisha as Al watches, unsure as to whether he should cry or not. He wants to, but it’s as if the tears are stuck behind his eyes. He rubs them with tiny, balled fists to try and make himself cry, but it only sends a sharp pang of guilt jolting through his chest. 

“Mama?”

“Oh baby...Estelle, baby...” Trisha coos through her tears as she lifts her young son up to her chest, pressing him against her as if he were a baby again. She rubs calming circles into his back, her hands trembling. She rises from her seat, still clutching Al tight. The pressure feels nice, and he rests his head on her shoulder and breathes in the faint flowery scent of her hair, combing his tiny fingers through it. 

Ed’s golden stare bores into the both of them as they return to the waiting room, and he immediately begins shooting off questions rapid-fire. Their mother remains silent, her lower lip quivering as she takes Ed’s hand, holding Al with the other. 

The walk home is silent, save for Ed asking their mother the same unanswered questions he’d been asking since they left the clinic. 

“Moira, honey...please. I’ll tell you when you get older, okay?”

Ed’s lips tremble, “is Stella gonna die?”

Trisha laughs, hollow and empty and all but devoid of any real humor. “No, she won’t.”

Upon returning home, she allows both brothers once-in-a-lifetime unfettered access to their father’s study. After Al is subjected to a short, fruitless interrogation by Ed, the two bury themselves in their father’s books on alchemy. 

Al can hear their mother crying through the thin wooden floorboards, and he knows Ed can too. Al glances at him, but he’s much too absorbed in a thick, dusty old tome to pay his younger brother any attention. Uneasiness gnaws at Al’s heart, and in all his unvented frustration, he chews at the skin on his lips until they bleed and the vile taste of iron leaks into his mouth like poison. The two remain sequestered in the bedroom until their mother calls them for dinner, her voice thin and trembling. The three sit in an uncomfortable silence punctuated only by the scraping of silverware against plates, and their mother tries in vain to make small talk, falling silent again when Ed asks about Al. 

Al avoids his mother’s tracing paper gaze, sliding out of his chair and slinking up the steps after dinner ends, Ed following in tow. They change into their pajamas in silence, brush their teeth in it, and climb into bed in it too, Ed shooting concerned glances at his younger brother all the while. 

With as much fake cheer as she can muster, their tucks her boys into bed. Her hollow smile doesn’t reach her eyes as she presses a kiss to either of their foreheads. As she pulls away, Ed squeaks out a question. 

“Mama, can you read us more of the story? I’m not tired yet!” And yet, as he says it, he rubs at his golden eyes with tiny balled fists, lips trembling with a stifled yawn. 

Trisha smiles, nodding. Her back straightens as a wide, bright smile spreads across Ed’s round face. 

She plucks a thick, leather-bound book from the shelf with one hand and places it in her lap, opening it to a bookmarked page near the center. With a deep breath, she begins reading. The story dances off the page as Trisha speaks, and Al can’t help but imagine himself as the lead character, a handsome and intelligent young alchemist. As he navigates down the twisting, claustrophobic cold walls of the cave clutching his lantern, a noise echoes from deep within. A girl stumbles from the darkness, her long blonde hair done in two braids and clutching a thick, dirty book. 

Al imagines the girl looking a bit like Ed, although she’s markedly less boyish than he is. 

The protagonist runs to hug the girl, his childhood best friend. Al casts a sidelong glance at Ed, the one who’s been by his side through thick and thin, not much unlike the characters in the book. Of course, their bond transcends even lifelong friendship, formed instead by the very blood flowing through their veins. 

As the two hug, the girl moves in and kisses her best friend, causing him to drop his lantern. A strange feeling of disgust writhes in Al’s stomach, and he can’t help but think about how much of a fire hazard the lantern is. 

“Ewww! They’re kissing!” Ed huffs, folding his arms across his chest and sticking out his tongue. Al nods in agreement, nothing short of repulsed by the idea of putting his mouth against someone else’s. 

Trisha laughs, brushing a lock of Ed’s golden hair from his face. She gives his cheek a gentle pinch before telling him that love is what created him and his brother, and that he’ll most certainly want to kiss a cute boy one day, and so will Al. 

He doesn’t know how to feel, thinking about it now. Some part of it feels _wrong_ , like it shouldn’t happen. 

“I don’t wanna,” Al protests, eyes wide with concern. 

Trisha laughs again but doesn’t touch him, which he’s grateful for. “You will, baby. It seems weird now, but you’ll grow into it. Don’t worry.”

His mother’s voice was so gentle and calming, reminiscent of waves crashing rhythmically and quietly against a shoreline. Still, the faint twinge of wrongness clawed at his chest, lingering on his tongue like the salty spray of ocean water. 

Al clenches his jaw and nods, but deep down he doesn’t believe her. Discomfort seeps through into his expression, bitter and contorted, and his mother pushes his hair away from his forehead and presses a kiss against it, flashing a kind smile as she pulls away. 

His mother reads until the end of the chapter, Al’s immersion in the book long since broken and his enthusiasm all but depleted. He can’t help but let out a sigh of relief as his mother shuts the book and places it back on the shelf. Al slides under the blanket, and Ed does the same, albeit with much more noticeable reluctance. 

Trisha bids them a warm goodnight and flips off the light, bathing the room in darkness save for the sliver of light surrounding the outline of the door. Al stares up at the ceiling, mind racing. 

Is he really going to fall in love? 

The thought twists his stomach into a tight knot, and he tries to imagine kissing a cute boy, but his lips burn and the made-up boy’s face is nothing but a blur. 

He imagines a girl. 

It’s worse, so much worse. Disgust rises in his throat like bile, bitter on his tongue. 

“Is there something wrong with me?” He whispers into the darkness’ gaping maw, answered only by silence and Ed’s soft, shallow breathing.

A tear rolls down the curve of his cheek, staining his pillow.


	3. III

He’s been four years old for almost four months now, going on five. 

Things between him and his mother have been more awkward, even if she ignores it, Al can’t help but feel every painful second of his mother’s pitying stare prickling his skin. 

He wonders exactly what it is that’s wrong with him. Every time he asks his mother, she gives him that achingly familiar hollow smile and strokes his cheek, echoing the empty mantra of ‘nothing, sweetie.’

Winry’s voice repeating his name shakes him from his thoughts.

She asks if he’s okay, cocking her head with eyebrows raised. 

Al nods, embarrassed heat creeping into his cheeks. 

Winry points out his obvious blush as she places her hands on her hips, stomping through the lukewarm creek water towards him. She flashes a smug grin, asking if he has a crush on her too

Al takes a step back, “...too?”

Winry rolls her eyes, shaking her head. “Duh. I mean, Moira obviously has a crush on me.”

He’s never thought about it. A crush...on his best friend? The concept feels all but foreign to him, and all he manages to stutter out is a question about why everything always has to be about crushes. 

Winry looks him over for a moment, tapping a finger against her chin as she scrutinizes him with narrowed eyes before saying she didn’t want to marry a girl shorter than her. 

Al laughs, and Winry sighs. She glances over her shoulder up in the direction of the path that leads through the sparse forest. Ed is nowhere to be seen, having returned home to get some snacks for the three of them. She glances back at Al, chewing at her bottom lip as if she wants to say something. 

He doesn’t notice, and Winry is thankful for his obliviousness and shoddy social skills, made up of a shambled-together, uneven patchwork of things he’d picked up from mimicking others. 

“Hey, Stella...” Winry starts, drawing in a sharp breath through her nose. 

Al looks at her, but his eyes don’t meet hers. 

She’s grateful.

“Do you ever...wonder what it would be like to be a different sex?” 

For a moment, Al is taken aback. It’s such a random question; it seems to have come straight out of left field and smacked him in the face at full force. 

He thinks about it for a long time, fiddling with the hem of his shorts as his mind rolls the question around like the stones in the creek underfoot. When he says he doesn’t know, Winry scoffs and asks what kind of answer that is. 

He repeats her question back to her, and a dark pink flush blooms across her pale cheeks. She nods, staring down into the babbling stream below at her distorted reflection. 

“Do you want to be a girl?” Al asks, blunt and direct as ever. 

He couldn’t have anticipated Winry’s response. 

Tears spring into the corners of her blue eyes, and she begins to cry almost immediately. Sobs wrack her body, and she swipes in desperation at the tears rolling down her cheeks. 

“I don’t know what to tell Aunt Pinako,” Winry replies, her voice small and shaky, worn thin from crying. 

Al searches for something to say, discomfort creeping into his bones like static. “J-just...just tell her the truth. If she doesn’t accept you, then...you can always come and live with big sister and I!” 

A few moments later, Ed crests the top of the sloping hill that leads down to the creek, shouting to his younger brother and best friend turned crush, waving like a madman. He half-runs half-stumbles down the overgrown grass covering the bank, placing the picnic basket down before kicking off his boots and stomping into the creek with all the grace of an elephant, rainbow mist filling the air. 

A wide, beaming grin graces his flushed, round face, and he just stands there for several moments, waiting for Al and Winry to say something. 

All that greets him is a quiet sniffle from Winry, and he opens his eyes to look at her. 

“Eh—h-hey, why are you crying?” Ed glances over his shoulder at Al, golden eyes wide with concern. 

“I-I didn’t do anything!” Al squeaks, raising his hands in defense. 

“What did you say to him?” Ed insists, and Al shakes his head. Winry’s body shudders as she cries on Ed’s shoulder. 

“Ed, there’s something I need to tell you.”


	4. IV

A few weeks before Al turns five, disaster strikes like a swift storm. 

Trisha dies. 

Al doesn’t know how long she’d kept it a secret from them, all he knows is that she never acted sick. She always kept a smile on her face and love for her sons in her heart, and had never so much as once mentioned feeling unwell. 

He knows she wouldn’t have wanted them to worry. Perhaps she even knew her death was approaching, Al thinks. Either way, Trisha is dead. 

He and Ed move in with Pinako and Winry, their father long since having left Resembool for a place Al doesn’t know and Ed doesn’t care about. It’s uncomfortable at first, and when everyone sits down to eat dinner together, they do so in utter silence. 

Some things get easier. 

Pinako learns to adjust to Al’s idiosyncrasies, and she no longer scolds him when he picks the carrots out of his stew or when he rocks back and forth in his chair against the wood floor. 

Ed comes out when he’s eight. He keeps his long hair but changes his name to Edward and his pronouns to he and him. Al accepts it wholeheartedly, his brother having said he wanted to be a boy for the past year. Pinako adjusts to the new Ed after a few weeks, her support for him never wavering. 

When grief finally loosens its grip on the both of them, they return home, pushing a wheelbarrow they took from Pinako’s shed down the rocky path to their abandoned home. 

Their house looks less and less like one every time they return, and anxiety churns in Al’s stomach. The unkempt lawn runs wild with plant life that hasn’t been trimmed in over a year, all sorts of vines and creeping foliage starting their journey of reclaiming the building. There’s a hole in the decaying roof, formed by weeks of continuous water damage. 

By some miracle, Hohenheim’s library is untouched by Earth’s reclamation, covered in a thick blanket of dust at its worst. They make five trips between their old home and their current one, stacking piles of books several feet high in their small shared bedroom. By the time they finish, the sun has long since sunken below the horizon, and exhaustion finds the both of them breathless on the old wood of their bedroom floor. 

“Looks like we got a lot of reading to do, Stella.”

Al nods.

Ed stares up at the ceiling, rubbing at his bloodshot eyes irritated by the dust that had made itself at home in every crevice of every book. Silence hangs between them like a curtain before Ed clears his throat with a cough.

“What do you think we’ll find?”

“What?”

Ed sighs, “what do you think we’ll find in our shitty old man’s books?”

“I dunno,” Al shrugs.

“I’m scared.” 

Al nods, “me too.”

Pinako calls them down for dinner, scolding them for getting their clothes covered in dust. 

After finishing dinner and taking a bath, Ed and Al head to bed, waiting with baited breath for Pinako to go to sleep. When the light in the hallway dies, Ed produces a flashlight from the desk beside their bed and shines it upward in his face, grinning wide. 

“Wanna read our old man’s books?”

A smile pulls at Al’s lips, and he nods. 

Weeks turn into months, and they stop reading in secret. Years come and go like clouds, and a few days after Al turns ten, Ed marches into the bedroom babbling about something Al can’t understand. 

“Big brother, slow down,” Al says. 

Ed stops, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment. “Sorry!” He glances over his shoulder before pushing the door closed with a quiet click. He climbs onto the bed next to his brother, a mischievous grin plastered on his face. 

“I wanna bring mom back.”

Al almost falls off the bed. “What?!”

“I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out. Our shitty pops may have been a huge scumbag, but he did one thing right by leaving behind his formula for human transmutation.”

Al’s lips press into a frown, “is it safe? Everything we read said not to attempt it under any circumstances.”

“Pssht,” Ed gives a nonchalant wave, “I’m sure that’s all just a buncha BS to keep people from trying to bring back dead people.”

“But...why would they want to keep us from bringing back dead people in the first place? There’s gotta be a reason, right?”

Ed claps his younger brother on the back, earning a surprised squeak from Al. “Stella, you worry way too much! It’ll be perfectly fine. Besides, don’t you wanna see mom again?”

Al nods. He does. He wants to see Trisha again more than anything in the world, even just for a moment.

But he didn’t want to see her the way he does. 

He knows he’ll never forget that charred, skeletal face for as long as he lives, as black as if it was composed of darkness itself. 

Ed sees it in his dreams. He climbs into a warm bed that makes Al’s body ache to feel the comfort of sleep and the warmth of blankets against his skin again, and he wakes up crying and screaming until his voice is hoarse. 

Al spends his cold, lonely nights in the darkened hallway, counting the patterns in the old, creaky wood floor until the sun begins to pour in through the windows and Ed is released, at least until the sun dies behind the green hills of Resembool like tombstones. 

There’s no comforting Ed. There’s nothing he can do except wait for him to be able to walk and move again. 

It feels like waiting is all he does.


	5. V.

At first, he’s thankful for the sleepless nights. He knows he won’t see that _thing_ again in his nightmares. That horrible, twisted mockery of his mother won’t return to haunt him again, in exchange for his freedom. 

His body feels different in the armor. No senses means no sensory overload, but it also means stimming is useless. Boredom and anxiety become a constant, chewing at his brain like an annoying case of constant tinnitus, waxing and waning but never fully disappearing. 

It’s torture, he thinks. Sensory deprivation. 

Pinako and Winry still call him Estelle, and Ed, in the moments he’s awake, still calls him Stella. 

But it’s also liberation. 

Being in the suit makes him realize just how uncomfortable his body was. His gendered body, his _feminine, girly_ body, changing in ways that made him want to curl up and die. 

Ed had it too, as did Winry before him. Some kind of primal unease characterized by the inability to be at home in a body that feels like a skin several sizes too tight.

He’s thankful he found the light at the end of the tunnel. Living in a body assaulted by sensory attacks without cease every day had blinded him to his dysphoria. He’d done nothing but chalked it up to some kind of discomfort brought about by his condition. 

Endless nights he spends in solitude means endless nights to think of a new name. Whilst he cherishes the name given to him by his mother, it isn’t his. His mother named a daughter, but he isn’t one. 

He settles on Alphonse, and breaks the news to Pinako in the morning, during a break between the moments she spends fussing over Ed.

She cries, which he doesn’t expect. Still, he’s grateful. He comes out to Ed and Winry when she’s standing beside his bed, taking measurements for the prostheses she’ll build for him. 

Is that what love means?

Even in all the time he’s had to think about it, he isn’t sure. He wracks his brain night and night again, but always finds himself at the same dead end. 

He could always ask Ed, but he knows what his brother will tell him. He’ll smile and say that it’s something Al needs to figure out on his own. 

That’s always what he says.

Winry and Pinako don’t let him in the room during the operation. Maybe that’s for the best. 

He sits in the hallway just outside the room, and his body trembles. Even without feeling, the metal of his suit rattles. Time inches by like a thick syrup, and the sun creeps down the sky and vanishes behind the horizon by the time the door opens again. 

At first, Ed is unsteady on his new leg. His new arm doesn’t work like he wants it to, and basic tasks more often than not end in frustration. Adjusting to his changed body is like walking up a hill.

However, as time passes, Ed’s opinion changes. His arm and leg become his freedom, a shield that protects him. They’re a part of him, something that allows him to run and jump and use his alchemy again. 

It’s his body, and he loves it. It’s a body that takes him across the country and even further, and Al is happy. 

Ed falls in love with Winry. 

Al can’t say he didn’t expect it to happen. The way Ed smiles when he’s around her, the way his cheeks flush, the way he can’t make eye contact with her for more than a few moments, the way he makes sure to touch Winry’s hand whenever he can, Al knows that’s what love is supposed to look like. 

But his own love looks different, and he wonders if there’s something wrong with him. He doesn’t understand why Ed and Winry get so embarrassed around each other. When he asks Ed what embarrasses him about Winry, his face gets hot and he just says that he doesn’t like it when she chews him out over silly things.

He has a feeling that isn’t true, but doesn’t pry. 

Al thinks he understands when he meets a Xingese girl along he and Ed’s journey. Al thinks she’s a nice girl, and falls for her adorable yet strange cat at first sight. She calls him Mister Alphonse, and he thinks nothing of it. The girl, Mei, clings to him like a child, and he sometimes feels uncomfortable.

Their journey ends with Ed giving up his alchemy, and Al knows the way he feels about Ed is different than how Ed feels about Winry. His love is familial, born from the bond of their blood, but he feels complete with it.

Whilst Al’s learning to walk again, Mei asks him out. She says that she’s in love with him, and that she wants to be his girlfriend.

He turns her down, and guilt chews at him for a week straight afterwards. He says Mei’s a nice girl, but that’s where his feelings end. He asks Ed if there’s something wrong with him, and Ed laughs.

“Of course not.”


	6. VI

Paninya moves in with Ed and Winry before their children are born. A brief but pleasant conversation with her reveals that their feelings on love are similar. Paninya isn’t sure how she feels about Winry, but she knows she wants to be with her. The two of them cuddle and kiss and even had sex once. Winry is polyamorous and married to Ed, and Ed and Paninya are friends, so the living arrangement works surprisingly well. Paninya isn’t sure how she feels romantically about Winry, but she knows she has sexual attraction towards her. 

Al likes Paninya. She makes him feel less weird. 

Still, his autism won out in the end after he’d finished his recovery, and he lives alone in a small stone house down the street from Ed, Winry, and Paninya’s. His life is anything but lonely, however. Despite having no interest in dating, now and again he brings men home for hookups, enjoying a night’s worth of company. He lives with his four cats and works at the animal shelter in town caring for others, even going so far as to rescue stray ones he finds wandering about. 

He picked up new hobbies after returning from Xing, and is learning Xingese in preparation for his second trip. Upon returning from his first year-long trip, he began cooking the Xingese food he’d gotten used to. Ling’s servants at the royal palace had given Al the recipes he liked, and it was all downhill from there. After that, he’d started cooking other types of food, and now spent several hours a day cooking and perfecting his recipes. It isn’t uncommon for him to show up at Ed’s door with a mixing bowl, asking the residents of the home to sample an unfinished recipe.

Despite his love for cooking, Al’s true pride and joy is his library. He even tore down one of the walls of his small home to make more room for his massive collection of books, old hardwood floors lined with bookshelves. 

Most of them are from Hohenheim’s collection, the books he and Ed had read as children to teach themselves alchemy. Some of them are in Xingese, and others are texts so old that Al can’t read them. The many shelves embody dozens of subjects from medicine to astronomy, and there are times when simply perusing the shelves occupies hours of his day. 

He settles on an old, leather-bound book about the history of alchemy in Amestris. He removes the book from its place on the shelf, and one of his cats curls its body around his leg, meowing and purring as it rubs its face against Al’s pants.

Al laughs and kneels down to scratch his cat on the head. It follows him to the large window seat at the end of the room, grey mid-day light pouring in from outside, where storm clouds heavy with rain hang low in the sky. He climbs into the seat, his cat jumping up near his feet, curling up on one of the pillows. Above him, potted plants hang suspended from the ceiling of the window seat. 

It’s peaceful, Al thinks. He opens the book and brushes the dust off the old, yellowed pages. As the minutes pass, rain taps against the window. He can’t help but watch as the droplets roll down the glass of the windowpane, disappearing down the side of the house.

He laughs to himself at the idea that a life without romance is lonely, when his is anything but.


End file.
